1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording and playback apparatus, a music-data recording and playback method, and a music-data recording and playback program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Products called music servers, which record as compressed data the music data from a music compact disk (CD) onto, for example, a hard disk while simultaneously playing back the music data, are well known. These products record music data from a music CD in the CD drive onto a hard disk, for as many tracks as specified, such as a single track, several tracks, or all tracks.
Some of these products play back music data from a music CD at the standard rate, while simultaneously recording music data from the same CD onto a hard disk at a higher rate, for example, at a rate eight times the standard rate. In this case, since the playback rate differs from the recording rate, if the power is turned OFF or the music CD, say an album, is ejected while two or more tracks on the CD are being sequentially played back and recorded, it is not possible to determine the last track recorded.
For this reason, when the user inserts into the CD drive a music CD having a history of interrupted recording before completion to resume recording from the track subsequent to the last recorded track, the user needs to perform a time-consuming operation of visually checking the tracks already recorded with reference to, for example, a playlist of the recorded tracks before specifying tracks that have not yet been recorded.
To overcome this problem, a known playback apparatus enables the user to understand up to which track recording is completed by synchronizing playback with recording. More specifically, in this known playback apparatus, when the recording of, for example, the second track is started, playback of the second track is also started at the same time, even if the playback of the first track has not yet been completed.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-288547 proposes another known playback apparatus. In the playback apparatus described in this Patent Application Publication, if recording is interrupted prematurely, CD playback resumes from the recording-interrupt point, while recording onto a mini disk (MD) is resumed from the last recording point.
In this known playback apparatus, however, the user may feel annoyed because playback of a track is interrupted before completion, although the user can know up to which track recording is completed. Another problem with this known playback apparatus is that when recording of a music CD is to be started from the last recording point long after the recording of the music CD has been interrupted, the user forgets the last track recorded, similarly forcing the user to perform a time-consuming operation of, for example, checking a playlist.